I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

Categorized in : Past Character Distance

Well. I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

wells ghost believe

I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I'm reviewing a book or doing research.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

love-to-read research book

If you're going to spend two or three years immersed in a subject, you better be deeply interested in it, or it won't be interesting to the reader.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

two years interesting

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

smart example book

I'm very interested, in all my books, in community, what binds people together, which I think is an obvious consequence of being the fourth of six children.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

book children thinking

How quickly a person in pain whom you can't help becomes a reproa... by Beth Richardson Gutcheon

How quickly a person in pain whom you can't help becomes a reproach. And then, no doubt, a thorn.

Beth Richardson Gutcheon

pain doubt helping